Posted on 06/02/2004 9:46:33 PM PDT by kattracks
Recently, I wrote an article called “Summer Reading,” which was intended to motivate my readers to take some time to read classic literature over the summer. While mostly apolitical, it did close with the following line, which was deemed offensive by one of my readers: “(Go out and) pick up a great work of classic literature and enjoy the reading. You know, like the kind they used to assign in college when English professors taught English instead of homosexuality and feminism.”
The offended reader, from Ithaca, New York, called my above assertion “sexist, heterosexist, and gratuitous.” So, naturally, I apologized. No, I’m just kidding. Instead of apologizing, I decided to search the webpage of the nearest university English department to see what I could find. Naturally, I went looking first on Cornell.edu. Here is a summary of what I found out about the English faculty at Cornell University:
James Eli is an expert in gender and sexuality.
Frederic Bogel is an expert in critical (that means Marxist) theory.
Mary Pat Brady is an expert in U.S. Latino and Latina literatures and cultures, cultural studies, and American multi-ethnic literatures.
Laura Brown is an expert in feminist criticism, Marxist criticism, and cultural critique.
Cynthia Chase is an expert in women's literature.
Eric Cheyfitz is an expert in federal Indian law.
Barbara Correll is an expert in gender, cultural studies, lesbian, bisexual, and gay literary studies.
Elizabeth DeLoughrey is an expert in feminist theory and women's writing.
Laura Donaldson is an expert in American Indian literature and culture, American Indian women, gender, race and law.
Alice Fulton is an expert in critical (that means Marxist) writing, postmodernism, and feminist theory.
Andrew Galloway is an expert in the sociology of knowledge, and visions of women and women's writings.
Ellis Hanson is an expert in lesbian and gay studies, and psychoanalysis.
Molly Hite is an expert in feminist criticism and theory, and postmodernism.
Mary Jacobus is an expert in feminist literary criticism and theory, and women's writing.
Phyllis Janowitz is an expert in women and literature.
Biodun Jeyifo is an expert in African and Caribbean Anglophone literatures, comparative African and Afro-American critical thought, Marxist literary and cultural theory, and twentieth-century revolutionary social philosophy and literature.
Carol Kaske is an expert in Middle Ages and Renaissance, and cultural history of these periods (especially gender).
Douglas Mao (not to be confused with Chairman Mao) is an expert in gay, lesbian, and bisexual studies.
Kenneth McClane is an expert in African American literature.
Kate McCullough is an expert in women's literature, feminist literary criticism and theory, and lesbian/queer theory.
Dorothy Mermin is an expert in women's poetry.
Satya Mohanty is an expert in critical (that means Marxist) theory.
Timothy Murray is an expert in cultural studies as well as lesbian, bisexual, and gay literary studies.
Mash Raskolnikov is an expert in feminist and queer studies.
Shirley Samuels is an expert in feminist criticism.
Paul Sawyer is an expert in Marxian and feminist approaches and the ways questions of politics and ideology can be related to close local readings.
Hortense Spillers is an expert in the study of aspects of African American and American literature, feminist, Marxist, and more general theories of contemporary criticism.
Shelly Wong is an expert in Asian American, African American, and ethnic literatures as well as Asian Canadian literature and, finally, cultural studies.
William Jefferson Clinton recently gave the commencement address for the Cornell University graduating class of 2004. He is an expert on college interns with thong underwear.
Mike Adams (www.DrAdams.org) is a professor of Elderly Asian Lesbian Criminology. Just kidding. He is actually the author of “Welcome to the Ivory Tower of Babel.” Signed copies of his book can be ordered on his website.
©2004 Mike S. Adams
Heh, welcome to Ithica the next target of the divine wrath.
hee hee...
Some day I am going to shock him...
These were stone age people whose "writing" consisted of pictures on rocks and teepees! You could probably cover the whole subject in half an hour. On the other hand, if you could get 3 units of credit with only 30 minutes of class time....
Are they supposing Degenerates exist, like mathematicians theorize about other dimensions?
I think Queer Theory attempts to answer the question: How does an author write a book with only odd pages...?
I once knew a lesbian writer. She wrote a book without any punctuation except periods. I also knew a gay writer. He wrote a book without any punctuation but colons....
Wow. Everyone is an "expert" in "Marxist deconstructivist lesbian post-modernism and queer theory." If it ever gets to the point where they have mathematics professors who are "experts" in "Marxian critical theory and statistics" or "deconstructivism and prime numbers" or "queer theory and fractions," it will be time to burn the whole institution down and replace it with something relatively healthy like a toxic waste dump.
Well, I am glad that Queer Theory cannot yet be proven to be a law (except in MA.) My college English teacher was a card carrying communist and let everyone know it. He was (hold onto your seats) an East German. Notice I did not say East German immigrant, as he was only here on a visa. To make matters worse I had his class on the same day I had a military science class so I was always in uniform. If that wasn't bad enough he had been forced to serve in the East German army and hated everything to do with the military (except of course for its role in advancing the Revolution!) It was an ugly semester.
Homosexual Agenda Ping - Wow, Ithaca the City of Evil is just wound up like a top, isn't it?
The deluge of sewage won't stop.
Note: Parents and Grandparents, think VERY VERY carefully before you send your younguns off to college or university. You may not recognize them when they return.
Let me know if anyone wants on/off this very busy pinglist.
This article is almost beyond belief. You just keeping thinking, This has GOT to be the Onion. But it isn't.
bflr
My M.A. adviser was a lesbian, but it played no part in her academic work. She's a leading expert in Chinese rhetoric (and she's not Chinese or even Asian), and was remarkably tolerant of my outspoken conservatism (we're still friends and have stayed in touch).
If 90% of the state universities in the country were shut down and the enormous revenue savings rebated to the taxpayers, wouldn't that be a good thing? And what if state and federal support for private universities were slashed to the bone? And who would seriously contend that any "dumbing down" whatsoever would be detectable in the population? The football and basketball teams would support themselves and isn't that the best part of any university?
The university is a social and cultural phenomenon which has outlived its usefulness.
Essentially identical to developments in the University of Arizona Department of English Literature, only now it's called the Department of Rhetoric. It seems the graduate courses can no longer support the English or literature definition. (sigh)
Ah, geez! Ya see, that's why I hang around here. For the enlightenment. That's funny, Billy...................FRegards
My oldest daughter is a Cornell grad, but she was a business major and an athlete. For sure my younger kids won't be attending that school.
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